lonel Carteret would have known him.--By the way, dearest child, they
do mean to honour me, those two, don't they, with their presence on
Thursday?"

"Of course they will, since you asked them. Why, they love to come
and see you."

"Do they?" Mrs. Frayling said--"Anyhow, let us hope so. I can trust
Carteret's general benevolence, but I am afraid your father will be
unutterably bored with my rubbishing little assembly."

"But, of course, he'll be nice to everybody too--as tame and gentle as
possible with them all to please you, don't you see, Henrietta."

"Ah! no doubt, all to please me!" she repeated. And fell to musing,
while the carriage, quitting at last the rough forest track, rattled out
on to the metalled high road, white in dust.

Here the late afternoon sun still lay hot. The booming plunge of the
tideless sea, breaking upon the rocks below, quivered in the quiet air.
Henrietta Frayling withdrew her hands from her muff, unfastened the
collar of her sable cape. The change from the shadowed woods to this
glaring sheltered stretch of road was oppressive. She felt strangely
tired and spent. She trusted Damaris would not perceive her uncomfortable
state and proffer sympathy. And Damaris, in fact, did nothing of the
sort, being very fully occupied with her own concerns at present.

Half a mile ahead, pastel-tinted, green-shuttered houses--a village of a
single straggling street--detached themselves in broken perspective from
the purple of pine-crowned cliff and headland beyond. Behind them the
western sky began to grow golden with the approach of sunset. The road
lead straight towards that softly golden light--to St. Augustin. It led
further, deeper into the gold, deeper, as one might fancy, into the heart
of the coming sunset, namely to the world-famous seaport of Marseilles.

Damaris sought to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it
occurred to her. She must not dally with it--no she mustn't. To in
anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having
accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on
her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she
had pledged herself.

So she let her eyes no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to
sea--where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big
cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue,
long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from